He was squinting at me. “You know, Mr. Goodwin, I’m a mathematics teacher and I like problems. Since this is so close to us, though it’s closer to my wife than to me, it isn’t just a problem, but still my mind has the habit.” He put a hand on his wife’s knee. “You won’t mind, dear, if I admit I would like to help with this problem. But I won’t. I know how you feel. You do exactly what you want to do.”
“Fair enough,” I told him. And to her: “You saw your sister often, didn’t you?”
She had put her hand on top of his. “Yes,” she said.
“Once or twice a week?”
“Yes. Nearly always we had dinner together on Saturday and went to a show or a movie. My husband plays chess Saturday evenings.”
“According to the newspaper, when you went there day before yesterday you got no answer to your ring and the superintendent let you in. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“That was an important moment, when you entered the bedroom. I don’t want to jar you again, Mrs. Fleming, I truly don’t, but it’s important. What was your first thought when you saw your sister’s dead body there on the floor?”
“I didn’t – it wasn’t a thought.”
“First there was the shock, of course. But when you saw the – when you realized she had been murdered, it would have been natural to have the thought He killed her or She killed her, something like that. That’s why it’s important; a first thought like that is often right. Who was the he or the she?”
“There wasn’t any he or she. I didn’t have any such thought.”
“Are you sure? At a time like that your mind jerks around.”
“I know it does, but I didn’t have a thought such as that then or any other time, that he killed her or she killed her. I couldn’t even try to guess who killed her. All I know is there mustn’t be a trial.”
“There will be a trial, of Orrie Cather, unless we can find a way to stop it. Did your sister ever show you her diary?”
She frowned. “She didn’t keep a diary.”
“Yes, she did. The police have it. But since –”
“What does it say?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen it. Since –”
“She shouldn’t have done that. That makes it worse. She didn’t tell me. She must have kept it in that drawer she kept locked. Don’t I have a right to it? Can’t I make them give it to me?”
“Not now. You can later. If there’s a trial it will be evidence. It’s called an exhibit. Since you never saw it, we’ll have to skip it. It looks pretty hopeless, because I don’t know of anyone but you who can give me any information. Of course a good prospect would be the man who paid the rent for the apartment, and the car and the perfume and so on, but I don’t know who he is. Do you?”
“No.”
“That surprises me. I thought you would. You were close with your sister, weren’t you?”
“Certainly I was.”
“Then you must know who else was. Since you say you couldn’t even try to guess who killed her, I’m not asking that, just who knew her well. Of course you have told the police.”
“No, I haven’t.”
I raised a brow. “Are you refusing to talk to them too?”
“No, but I couldn’t tell them much because I don’t know. It was …” She stopped, shook her head, and turned to her husband. “You tell him, Barry.”
He squeezed her hand. “You could almost say,” he said, “that Isabel lived two lives. One of them was with my wife, her sister, and to a much less extent me. The other one was with her – well, call it her circle. My wife and I know very little about it, but we sort of understood that her friends were mostly from the world of the theater. You will realize that in the circumstances my wife preferred not to associate with them.”
“It wasn’t what I preferred,” she corrected. “It was what was.”
That helped a lot, another whole circle, but I might have expected it. “All right,” I told her, “you can’t give me names you don’t know. Isn’t there anyone, anyone at all, that you know and she knew?”
She shook her head. “Nobody.”
“Dr. Gamm,” Fleming said.
“Oh, of course,” she said.
“Her doctor?” I asked.
Fleming nodded. “Ours too. An internist. He’s – you might say – a friend of mine. He plays chess. When Isabel had a bad case of bronchitis a couple of years ago I –”
“Nearly three years ago,” she said.
“Was it? I recommended him. He’s a widower with two children. We have had him and Isabel here two or three evenings for bridge, but she wasn’t very good at it.”
“She was terrible,” Stella Fleming said.
“No card sense,” Fleming said. “His name is Theodore Gamm with two Ms. His office is on Seventy-eighth Street in Manhattan.”
Presumably he was helping with the problem, and I fully appreciated it; at least, by gum, I had one name and address. I got my notebook out and wrote it down to show that I was on the ball.
“He can’t tell you anything,” she said, perfectly calm, but suddenly she was on her feet, trembling, her hands tight fists, her eyes hot. “Nobody can! They won’t, they won’t! Get out! Get out!”
Fleming, up too, had an arm across her shoulders, but she didn’t know it. If I had sat tight she would probably have soon got organized again, but I hadn’t had a bite since breakfast. I nodded at Fleming, and he nodded back, and I went to the foyer for my hat and coat and let myself out. As I entered the elevator, William said, “So you got in, huh?” and I said, “Thanks to you, pal, telling both of them I was there.” Outside it was even colder, but the Heron started like an angel, as it damn well should, and I headed for the Grand Concourse.
When I entered the office, a little after half past six, Wolfe was at his desk, scowling at a document two inches thick – part of the transcript of the Rosenberg trial, which he had sent for after reading the first three chapters of Invitation to an Inquest. My desk was clean, no memos or messages about phone calls. I yanked a sheet from my pocket notebook and sat studying it until Wolfe cleared his throat, whereupon I rose and handed it to him.
“There,” I said. “The name and address of the doctor who treated Isabel Kerr when she had bronchitis nearly three years ago.”
He grunted. “And?”
“You’ll appreciate it more if I lead up to it. I spent an hour with Mr. and Mrs. Barry Fleming. Now or after dinner?”
He looked at the clock. Thirty-five minutes to anchovy fritters. “Is it urgent?”
“Hell, no.”
“Then it can wait. Saul called twice. Nothing. Fred will join him in the morning. I rang Mr. Parker, and he came after lunch and I described the situation, everything relevant except the name of Avery Ballou. He telephoned later. He had seen Orrie, and he has arranged for you to see him in the morning at ten o’clock. He thinks it advisable.”
“Has Orrie been charged? Homicide?”
“No.”
“But no bail?”
“No. Mr. Parker doesn’t wish to press it.” He glanced at the sheet I had handed him. “What’s this? Did this man kill her?”
“No, he cured her. I’m very proud of it. It’s the crop.”
“Pfui.” He dropped it and resumed with the transcript.
Business is taboo at the dinner table, but crime and criminals aren’t, and the Rosenberg case hogged the conversation all through the anchovy fritters, partridge in casserole with no olives in the sauce, cucumber mousse, and Creole curds and cream. Of course it was academic, since the Rosenbergs had been dead for years, but the young princes had been dead for five centuries, and Wolfe had once spent a week investigating that case, after which he removed More’s Utopia from his bookshelves because More had framed Richard III.
He let up only when we were back in the office and had finished with coffee. He pushed the tray aside and asked if it had to be verbatim, and I said yes and proceeded. When I told about the deal with William he pursed his lips, not objecting, merely reacting to the fact that the fifteen bucks was down the drain, since we couldn’t expect to bill Orrie. Then he leaned back and closed his eyes and quit reacting, as usual, until I had finished.
He opened his eyes and demanded, “You had no lunch? None at all?”
I shook my head. “If I had gone out it might have cost a C to get back up. William is a mooch.”